"Darning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... having formed this astute conviction, walked out of the dining-room, and went down to her snug sitting-room, where, sitting down by the fire, she fell to darning a table-cloth while she thought things over. She had arrived at a conclusion that would have astonished her master, and she chanced to want more cotton, and rose to get it from her work-box. And among the reels and hanks ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... be allowed to sense his wife have got plenty of love and affection preserved, only he don't know where she keeps the jar at. As I say, I don't want Tom Mayberry spoiled. What did I do with that other sock?" And Mother began to hunt in her darning bag, in her lap and ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the window, making lace, on a cushion, at which she realizes about a dollar a week; Christine, the eldest girl, who still goes to school, was crocheting a baby's hood,—she does a good deal of work for Mrs. Burnett's fancy-store, and yet is a very smart scholar; Amelie, the next one, was darning the stockings; the boy, who comes third, was out-doors, tidying up the chicken-house; and the two little girls were in the corner, cutting and sewing patchwork, with a doll in the cradle between them. The house is always clean, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... by this time Mother Carey has taken out her darning, and Kathleen her oversewing, to which she pays little attention because she so adores Nancy's tales. Peter has sat like a small statue ever since his quick ear caught the sound of a story. His eyes follow Nancy as she walks up and down improvising, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... politics, and fancied that I had made some impression, the answer would be: "Well, I'd go, I'm sure, just to oblige you, but then there's the tomatoes to be canned"—or, "I'm so behindhand with my darning and patching"—or, "John'll be sure to go, and there's no need of two from the same house"—and so on, until I was mightily discouraged. There were just nine of us, all told, to about a hundred men. I won't deny that our situation that ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... chagrin, therefore, was excessive, when, the next Saturday morning but one after her daughters' return, Amelia came into her bedroom, where she sat darning a stocking by the window, and after so much hesitation that her mother began to wonder, suddenly put her arms about her neck, hid her blushing face upon her shoulder, and in that position softly whispered a confession, that a certain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... evening in May, Gray came in holding a bundle in his arms and poked it into her lap as she sat darning the holes in Tom's stockings (she was not good at needlework, but she managed, as she said, to 'goblify' the holes), he knew pretty well that it was into no unwilling arms that he gave ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... air is bewitched with "the world, the flesh, and the devil." There are Christians who in three or four weeks in such a place have had such terrible rents made in their Christian robe that they had to keep darning it until Christmas to get it mended! The health of a great many people makes an annual visit to some mineral spring an absolute necessity; but, my dear people, take your Bible along with you, and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... and prompt obedience form an important part of the curriculum, and the effects are noticeable in the quick movements and alert attitude of the inmates. The girls at Richmond receive training in domestic work, needlework, knitting, darning, &c., ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... hard to believe. When I think of the times I've sat in this room of an evening, and seen your husband come in, ma'am, with his battered hat nigh falling off the back of his head, and stuffed with papers that won't go into his pockets, and god-darning some rascal who'd done him about an assignment or a trespass, I can't think he's going up there into the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... round world we live on, He made some parts very unlike other parts. The climate, the trees and plants, and the animals of some countries altogether differ from those of other countries. If we could go right through the globe just as a darning needle is run through a ball of worsted, we should come out close to a country ten times as large as England, which belongs to our Queen, and is called Australia. To get to it, however, we have really to sail round ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... money and put it in his pocket. He had not lifted a hand to lighten that woman's burdens, but had sat and talked with the men in the bar room, not even caring for the baby, yet the law gives him the right to every dollar she earns, and when she needs two cents to buy a darning needle she has to ask him and explain what she ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... he demises To take us away from this hole And do just whatever we long to do. Tell me your perfect day." Said one, "Why, to fly to an island Far away in a deep blue lagoon; One would never be tired in my land Nor ever get up too soon." "Every time," cried the girl darning stockings, "We'd surf-ride and bathe in the sea, We'd wear nothing but little blue smockings And eat mangoes and crabs for our tea." "Oh no!" said a third, "that's a rotten Idea of a perfect day; I long to see mountains forgotten, Once more hear the ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... woman near the camp, and so all the laundry work fell to her. Laundry work in the pine woods implies mending and darning, as well as washing and ironing, and the poor little woman had her hands full of work surely. It was rub, rub, rub, day after day, over the steaming tub, with the children running about like little wolves, and Jeff kindly giving his advice from his comfortable corner. And even after ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... to gallop like the devil into the far distance when it is rumoured that the battalion will deploy. He sits now at leisure, but even at leisure he is not at ease: silent, with every nerve and fibre strained to the utmost tension, he crouches over his work. He is at his darning; ay, with real wool and a real needle he is darning his socks. The colour of his work may not be harmonious, but it is a thorough job; he has done what even few women would do, he has darned not only the hole in his hosiery but his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... Mrs. Ross's great-grandmother, Mrs. Taylor, who 'was called, by her intimate friends, "Madame Roland of Norwich," from her likeness to the portraits of the handsome and unfortunate Frenchwoman.' We hear of her darning her boy's grey worsted stockings while holding her own with Southey and Brougham, and dancing round the Tree of Liberty with Dr. Parr when the news of the fall of the Bastille was first known. Amongst her friends were Sir James Mackintosh, the most popular man of the day, 'to whom ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... into craters of volcanoes; by shooting themselves with ingenious combinations of a rifle with a sewing-machine; by strangling themselves with their hair; by swallowing poisonous spiders; by piercing their hearts with corkscrews and darning-needles; by cutting their throats with hand-saws and sheep-shears; by hanging themselves with grape vines; by swallowing strips of under-clothing and buckles of suspenders; by forcing teams of horses to tear their heads ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Revolution were not only Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Reed, and Mrs. Schuyler, but the wives of the farmers and shoemakers and blacksmiths everywhere. It is not Mrs. Stowe, or Mrs. Howe, or Miss Stevenson, or Miss Dix, alone, who is to save the country, but the thousands upon thousands who are at this moment darning stockings, tending babies, sweeping floors. It is to them I speak. It is they whom I wish to get hold of; for in their hands lies slumbering the future ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... in this budget—the striking cost of stockings, due to the daily walk to and from work and the ill little worker's lack of strength and time for darning. The outlay for footwear in all the budgets of the operators is heavy, in spite of the fact that much of their work is ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... his words, Polly felt she had been guilty of neglect, for she had quite forgotten to ask how Noddy was. Mrs. Brewster smiled as she continued her darning. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... fortnight we once enjoyed the company of the caterpillar of a common clothes moth. It is a little pale, delicate worm (Fig. 57, magnified), about the size of a darning needle, and rather less than half an inch in length, with a pale horn-colored head, the ring next the head being of the same color. It has sixteen feet, the first six of them well developed and constantly in use to draw the slender body in and out ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... earth, and trees, and the human stocks around me, I pour forth the language of the great song-masters, they grin at my insanity—they hold me incapable of reason, and declare their ideas of what that is, by asking who knows most of the dairy, the cabbage-patch, the spinning-wheel, the darning-needle—who can best wash Polly's or Patty's face and comb its head—can chop up sausage-meat the finest—make the lightest paste, and more economically dispense the sugar in serving up the tea! and these are what is expected of woman! These duties of the meanest slave! From her mind nothing ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... kitchen to find Nathaniel, and get him to help her move the stove. As soon as the business was over, Nathaniel came into the kitchen, and held up his sooty hands for Patty to see. She was stabbing the turkey with a darning-needle. ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... long legs stuck straight out astern, and their longer necks gathered into their crops, when we heard a loud shouting in the direction where the Captain's boat had vanished. Presently the Devil's Darning Needle, as the Scotch part of the crew loved to call the Dragonfly, stuck her long snout round the headland, and came spinning along with a Spanish canoe manned by four negroes, and steered by an elderly gentleman, a sharp acute—looking little man, in a gingham coat, in her wake, also ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... suspect them. As was the custom in that locality, the water supply depended on a rickety windwheel. It was with a dark foreboding that she returned to the kitchen and turned on one of the taps. For perhaps three seconds a stream of the dimension of a darning-needle emerged, then with a sad gurgle the tap relapsed into a stolid inaction. There is no stolidity so utter as that of ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... Hester sat in a rocking chair by the sitting room window, darning socks. She rocked violently and sent her long needle vigorously back and forth over her gourd, and it took only a very casual glance to see that she was wrought up over something. William sat on the other side of the table reading his farm paper. If he had noticed his wife's ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... stopped at the kitchen door, handed in the cress, exchanged a few laughing words with the cook, and then presented herself at the door of the summerhouse. Inside, his books and papers spread over a worktable, sat Donald Whiting. One side of him his mother was busy darning his socks; on the other his sister Louise was working with embroidery silk and small squares of gaily colored linen. Linda entered with exactly the same self-possession that characterized her at home. She shook hands with Mrs. Whiting, Mary Louise, and Donald, and then she said quietly: "Eileen ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... life, what a needle-woman! And the darning and mending for the children, it really gets quite beyond me now, Caudle. Now with mother at my hand, there wouldn't be a stitch wanted ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... near as possible to the required size, was carefully rubbed down upon a brick, and then had an eye laboriously worked through it with a bit of wire or something else available for the purpose. The needles were about the size of ordinary darning needles, and ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... established herself in the division of the cabin which was intended to be used as a sitting and dining room in bad weather, and applied herself to some sewing and darning, which had been reserved for just such a day as this. Mr. Archibald, in a water-proof suit, tried fishing for half an hour or so, but finding it both unpleasant and unprofitable, he joined his wife, made himself as comfortable as possible on two chairs, and began to read aloud one of the ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... night, it was rather larger than the first one, and had prodigious stiff, wiry whiskers about its upper lip, some of which we kept for a curiosity. They were over a foot in length, and as large as a coarse darning-needle. The tusks, too, were broken out, and ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... through Mimi's room, Papa opened the door of the bedroom, and we entered. The two windows on the right were curtained over, and close to them was seated, Natalia Savishna, spectacles on nose and engaged in darning stockings. She did not approach us to kiss me as she had been used to do, but just rose and looked at us, her tears beginning to flow afresh. Somehow it frightened me to see every one, on beholding us, begin to cry, although they had been ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... reason why you shouldn't go to bed at half-past eight, or nine at the latest. No reason whatever. And if you're quick and handy —and I'm sure you are—you'll have plenty of time in the afternoon for plain sewing and darning. I shall see how you can darn," Mrs. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... to have Sue. Where is Sue?" said Master Popplewell. "Now come you in out of the way of the wind, Debby; you know how your back-sinew ached with the darning before last wash." ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... kitchen misadventures, she actually shed tears, which so roused my sympathies that, with surprise, I exclaimed: "Why do you not buy a new stove?" To my unassisted common sense that seemed the most practical thing to do. "Why," she replied, "I have never purchased a darning needle, to put the case strongly, without consulting Mr. S., and he does not think a new stove necessary." "What, pray," said I, "does he know about stoves, sitting in his easy-chair in Washington? ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... to find the girls sewing and Mrs. Staton darning stockings. Mr. Staton had been reading his favorite ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... and Jean, very wide awake, demands a needle and thread, as she wants to sew a dress for Topsy. I tie a piece of thread into a large darning-needle and supply her with my handkerchief, which she proceeds to sew into a tight ball. I return to ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... She called me the 'Devil's Egg Bag' for a long time. I used to take a darning needle and punch the eyes out of guineas or chickens just to see em run around. She broke me of that. I know now she never whip me enough, but she made a man of me. I got a good name now. Always been a good worker. Done ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... he respect himself, or trust to himself for future daring? So he boldly asked for Mrs Mackenzie, and was at once shown into the parlour. There sat the widow, in her full lugubrious weeds, there sat Miss Colza, and there sat Mary Jane, and they were all busy hemming, darning, and clipping; turning old sheets into new ones; for now it was more than ever necessary that Mrs Mackenzie should make money at once by taking in lodgers. When Mr Maguire was shown into the room each lady rose from her chair, with her sheet in her hands and in her lap, ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... once owning herself a praedial servant, she would be sensible that this confession extended by probability in the hearer's thoughts to having incurred indignities of this horrible kind. Haumette clearly thinks it more dignified for Joanna to have been darning the stockings of her horny-hoofed father, Monsieur D'Arc, than keeping sheep, lest she might then be suspected of having ever done something worse. But, luckily, there was no danger of that: Joanna never was in service; and my opinion is that her father should ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... last item of our personal equipment I may mention that each man had a suit of sealskin from Greenland. Then there were such things as darning-wool, sewing-yarn, needles of all possible sizes, buttons, scissors, tapes — broad and narrow, black and white, blue and red. I may safely assert that nothing was forgotten; we were well and amply ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... hoods that ought to have been put up in camphor long ago; aprons hung up by the trimming; a calico dress that yawned mournfully out of a twelve-inch tear in the skirt; a pile of stockings that had waited long, and were likely to wait longer, for darning; some rubber-boots and ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... but of nameless saints of more retired and private state,—domestic saints, who have tended children not their own through whooping-cough and measles, and borne the unruly whims of fretful invalids,—stocking-darning, shirt-making saints,—saints who wore no visible garment of hair-cloth, bound themselves with no belts of spikes and nails, yet in their inmost souls were marked and seared with the red cross of a life-long self-sacrifice,—saints for whom the mystical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... at least a dozen wee things! Yes—I see her darning corduroys, Scouring floors, and setting out the tea-things, For a howling herd of ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... costs to produce it, and men will always try to protect property because that is what they themselves produce. At Antwerp our wounded men were begging us to go up to the hospital to fetch their purses from under their pillows! At present women are only repairers, darning socks, cleaning, washing up after men, bringing up reinforcements in the way of fresh life, and patching up wounded men, but some day they must and will have to say, "The life I produce has as much right to protection as the property ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... hidden, with equal cunning, in the "yarn cupboard," where were kept the woollen balls and yarn hanks, used in darning and knitting,—a small, high cupboard, with a little panel door, set in the wall of the sitting-room next to the fireplace and chimney. The bottom of this cupboard was formed of one broad piece of pine board, which seemed to be nailed down hard ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... Virginia loyally, while she got out her work-bag and began sorting the array of stockings that needed darning. "Do you know, mother, Oliver seems to think that I might go to New ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... the storm-king that slew the old pine and made his cones into a crown,—he sung of a thousand things which we might not understand, but which pleased the rose because she understood them. And one day the thrush swooped down from the linden upon a monstrous devil's darning-needle that came spinning along and poised himself to stab the beautiful rose. Yes, like lightning the thrush swooped down on this murderous monster, and he bit him in two, and I am glad of it, and so are you if your ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... But his pleasure was followed by quick mortification. What should he wear? Still holding the open note in his hand, he looked down ruefully at his clothes—his only ones. For all their brushing and darning they were unmistakably shabby—utterly unfit to grace a dinner-party. Nearly all of the hundred dollars which had seemed such a fortune had already been spent to pay bills incurred during his illness and to buy provisions ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... VI. for England. Previously to this period, the Abbey and Palace had suffered from fire, and they have since undergone such revolutions, that, as in the celebrated case of Sir John Cutler's stockings, which, in the course of darning, changed nearly their whole substance, it is now scarcely possible to distinguish what is really ancient from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... the biggest dogs to kill wolves. The Government of the United States is now breeding darning-needles ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... could only have been a man—who invented the Klinger darning and mending machine struck a blow at marriage. Martha Eggers, bending over her work in the window of the Elite Hand Laundry (washing delivered same day if left before 8 A.M.) never quite evolved this thought in her mind. When one's job is ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... seated in the cool, shaded living-room with their mending. It was an intensely warm afternoon and several degrees cooler inside the house than on the porch. Winnie insisted on helping with the darning—she would have felt hurt had she been denied the task of mating and sorting and mending the stockings and socks for the family each week—and she took pride in assisting Mrs. Willis to keep Doctor Hugh's belongings ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... at this elysium, on the night in question, he found Mrs. Davis usefully engaged in darning a stocking, while Scatterall sat opposite with a cigar in his mouth, his hat over his nose, and a glass of gin and ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... made of steel wire. In a needle-factory there are hundreds of coils of wire. Some of the wire is thick enough for darning-needles; some very thin ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... evening at the close of August. The father and son had been all day in the meadows, mowing the second crop of grass; Mrs Warner was darning stockings in the porch, with her two daughters knitting on the bench beside her; Amy being then fourteen, and Orphy about twelve. Chloe was absent, having been borrowed by a relation, about five miles off, to do the general work of the house, ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... peels of laughter, and roused the ire of the Queen's poodle, who attacked the small Yankee stranger. The General defended himself with his little cane, as valiantly as the original Tom Thumb with his mother's darning-needle. On the next visit, he was introduced to the Prince of Wales, whom he addressed with a startling, "How are you, Prince?" He then received a costly souvenir from the Queen, and, each time he performed, generous pay in gold. The Queen ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... life of which Andrew had dreamed—not even the reincarnation of Madame Flint sitting by the round table darning socks by the light of the shaded ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... isn't," laughed Arkwright. "Oh, she taught music, but that was only because of necessity, I take it. She's domestic through and through, with an overwhelming passion for making puddings and darning socks, I hear. Alice says she believes Mrs. Cyril knows every dish and spoon by its Christian name, and that there's never so much as a spool of thread out of order in ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... zeed ye; but thinks I, I be going out o' doors, and I'll put on my long ones, little thinking what they'd show me. Ay, I can tell folk at any distance with these—'tis a beautiful pair for out o' doors; though my short ones be best for close work, such as darning, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was darning. She worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did Charles. The air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... indication of a sandy sterile country. The spinifex found in the Mally scrubs of the south attains a great size, generally assuming the appearance of a large tuft or bush from one to two feet in diameter, and twelve to eighteen inches high. When old, its sharp points, like those of so many immense darning needles set on end at different angles, are especially annoying to horses, who never touch it as food, except when forced by starvation. In Northern Queensland the present species is found abundantly from ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... but she could never be sure what pranks they would play next, and was generally prepared for emergencies. She always had supplies handy of arnica, sticking plaster, and rags for cut fingers, and would toil away patiently mending long rents in small knickerbockers or darning holes in stockings and jerseys. Giles and Basil went daily to a branch establishment of Rodenhurst, kept by Miss Roscoe for boys under twelve; and Martin learnt his letters at home, and trotted about the house and ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... were entirely routed by finding Jack there in a most unmistakable situation. He blandly wished Horace "bon voyage," and regretted that he wouldn't be there to the wedding in October. Kitty devoted herself to blushing beautifully, and darning many rents in a short daisy muslin skirt, "which I intend to wear a great deal, because Jack likes it, and so do I," she said, with a demure look at her lover, who laughed as if that was the ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... others are out having a good time. Her cares never cease. She is responsible for the housework, for the preparation of meals; she has the children's clothes to make or mend, there is company to be entertained, darning to be done, and a score of little duties which must often be attended to at odd moments, snatched from her busy days, and she is often up working at night, long after every one else ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... her eyes in wonderment. She stared at Marcella, forgetting the sock she had just slipped over her left hand, and the darning ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this," we said, as we pulled and pinched them apart. "Oh, damn! I forgot about that stitchin' on the leg of my sea-boot," said one. "Wish I'd had time t' put a patch on here," said another, ruefully holding out his rubbers. "Too far gone for darning," said Eccles. "Here goes," and he snipped the feet part from a pair of stockings and tied ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... Lillianthals," mimicked Mrs. Binswanger, sliding her darning-egg down the length of a silken stocking. "I wish that name we had never heard. All of a sudden now education like those girls you think you got to have, ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... under the parental care and influence—such an one as made Mrs. Ripley, of Concord, Massachusetts, the wonder and admiration of every sensible man. She who studied La Place's Mecanique Celeste when she was making biscuit for her breakfast, and who solved a problem in the higher mathematics when darning her stockings; an education where the useful may be taught and learned to grace the ornamental—where the harp and piano shall share with the needle and the cooking-stove, and the pirouettes of the dancing-master shall be only a step from the laundry ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... enchained just then to her stocking- darning, first sighted the trio, and announced ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... and fro in the sunshine as they climbed the Doctor's whitewashed porch. Big bees hummed their sleepy drone from the fragrant hearts of the flowers, and a humming-bird whirred busily in and out in search of the honeysuckle that he loved. Up-stairs Mrs. Morgan was darning stockings in the coolest room in the house,—a bedroom with a northern exposure. A white shirt-waist gave a puffy look to a body that could ill endure such appearance of enlargement, and a black belt accentuated the amplitude of girth that ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... "A devil's darning needle? What is that, Senhor Tim?" inquired Pedro, passing him a cup of hot coffee. When the liquid—and the "skeeter"—had passed into Tim's stomach ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... to burn plenty of electricity or gas on cloudy days, for the artificial sunlight helps to cheer the heart. Such indoor games as those which may be had from blocks, puzzles, cutting out of pictures, darning of cardboard, soldier games, dolls, housekeeping, etc., are all splendid means of recreation for the little ones. Let the mother or caretaker join with the little folks in these pleasant games. For the older children, checkers and dominoes are most ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... it hadn't begun to pocket yet; and there hadn't been any breadths changed; and the mats saved the hearth-front and the doorway, and she could lay down more. And it would turn, when it came to that, and last on—as long as ever. There was six years in that carpet, without darning, if there was a single day; and Mr. Sparrow always took off his boots and put on his slippers, the minute ever ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... always coming from your left ear." Try blowing into the ear with the bellows three times a day. It may drive the wind back. For the "fulness, throbbing, &c.," we should advise ramming a good-sized darning-needle as far as it will go into the orifice. After that—or even before—it might be best to consult a competent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various
... apologue," she said, indignantly. "Upon my word, I think you would insinuate that philanthropy, when forced to manifest itself through embezzlement, is a less womanly employment than the darning of stockings!" ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... to run as fast as they could, while the ogre and his dog kept drawing always nearer. A few more steps, and he would have been by their side, when Dschemila threw the darning needle behind her. In a moment it became an iron mountain between them and ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... must be a 'high ole fracas', them was her words, agoin' on in Marster's room, for he was cussin' and swearin', and his granddaughter was jawing back very vicious. Sez I, 'Who'? Sez she, 'His granddaughter; that is Ellice's chile'. Sez I, 'How do you know so much'? Sez she, 'I was darning them liberry curtains, and I couldn't help hearing the wrangle'. Sez I, 'You picked a oncommon handy time to tackle them curtains; they must be mighty good to cure the ear-itch'. She axed me if I didn't see the family favor in the 'oman's face; and I tole her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the honest truth were told, Its heel confessed the need of darning; "Gods!" low-bred Vulcan cried, "behold! There! that's what ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... at every paroxysm. He did not like her so near him, but he did not blame her. Again, I say,—poor fellow! The woman opened the door, went to the other side of the room, and sat down on an old box and began darning an old neck-handkerchief. The silence was soon broken by the moans of the fast-dying man, and again he muttered, as he tossed to and fro, with baked ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... really was not so much sewing. Joe insisted upon ordering his shirts made; and Margaret had sent Ben half-a-dozen for Christmas. Then Barbara was very efficient, and, with true German thrift, improved every moment. She insisted on darning the stockings and knitting the woollen ones for winter. She was also a very neat hand ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... nearly Thanksgiving. The first snow had come and covered up everything that was bare and unsightly in the landscape with its beautiful mantle of white, and Anna, sitting by the window, dropped the stocking she was darning to press the bitter ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... widow, and was usually to be found seated by the fire, knitting a sock, or darning one, or mending ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... gracile thing is the mind that can leap thus from nine bargain basement hours of hairpins and darning-balls to the downy business of lining a crib in Never-Never Land and warming No Man's slippers before the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... needle to repair the wardrobe of her little household band. It was already growing scanty, and materials to replace it could only be procured at a distance, and means to procure it were limited. Patching and darning until their garments were beyond repair, she then supplied their place with skins stripped from the deer which the father had shot. Far into the night, by the flickering light of a single candle, this gentle housewife plied "her ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Miriam—the weekly mending Mademoiselle had told her of. Mademoiselle was superintending. Miriam listened. This was a sort of French lesson. They all sat round and did their mending together in French—darning must be quite different ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... that I visited a family, not of 'moderate fortune,' but of no fortune at all; one of those people who live 'nobody knows how;' and I found a young girl, about sixteen, practising on the piano, while an elderly lady beside her was darning her stockings. I was told (for the mother was proud of bringing up her child so genteelly) that the daughter had almost forgotten how to sew, and that a woman was hired into the house to do her mending! 'But why,' said I, 'have you ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... Her mother, darning stockings by the window, suddenly laid down her work and said: "Sylvia, how would you like to walk with me over to the Martins' to see if they have any eggs? Our hens have ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... variety." Passing from the kitchen the care of the different rooms of the house is taken up—the chambers, the sitting-room and the storeroom; instructions are given for making "blue Monday" less blue; the arts of starching and ironing are discussed; and a chapter is given to the mending and darning basket. Other portions of the book are devoted to "Company Days," "Shopping," "Sickness in the House," "Making the best of Things," and "Helps that are Helps," the servant-girl question forming the subject of the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... store that I warn you to look where you stand, and see that you don't lose your heart before you know it. It's an awful thing for a woman, Miss Ivy, to get a notion after a man who hasn't got a notion after her. Men go out and work and delve and drive, and forget; but there a'n't much in darning stockings and making pillow-cases to take a woman's thought off her troubles, and sometimes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... all about her offer to help Mrs. Denvers with her darning, tossed the letter in the air two or three times, and then sank down on the nearest ottoman to read it. These were the words on which her ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... darning socks for the young men. She was a wonderful mother for them, sewed for them, cooked for them, looked after them most carefully. Not ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... scissors, two or three assorted flat files, one hollow handle tool holder with tools and little saw, one good hand-saw, one hack-saw, one upholsterer's regulator, one pair fine tweezers (such as jewelers use), one claw hammer, an assortment of round and furriers' needles, one or two darning needles, a sack needle, and an assortment of artists' small bristle and sable brushes ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... she was going about her daily work with hollow eyes and without the usual glow in her cheeks. Within two weeks, the casual glimpse of Lizzie darning one of Amos' socks gave her a sense of nausea, but she hung on with determination worthy ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Use a darning or crewel needle, and a very long thread, or you will have to be continually taking fresh. This work is sometimes done with crewel wool, and in rather a different way, see Fig. 4; but it is not so neat and ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... a piazza in front (only people out of America are so stupid, they don't know what I mean when I say "piazza"); about six feet of yard with some grass and flowers. Me at school; Mamma reading novels with one eye, and darning papa's stockings with the other. My goodness, what a different Mamma! When I thought of the difference, I was surer than ever that I must be dreaming her as she is now, and I had half a mind to go and peek into the next room to look, and risk ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the shelf of his closet. He found it, opened it wide in the air and would have uttered a cry of joy but for the changed look of it. Even this had not escaped Mata's desecrating hands! It was mended everywhere. The white darning threads grinned at him like teeth. Also it was washed and ironed, and smelled of foreign soap. For an instant he tore at it angrily, and was minded to destroy it, but the sense of familiarity held him. He wrapped it about him slowly and, with ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... and a farmer's son, was never absent from prayers or lecture, nor once out of his college, after Tom had tolled. He spent every day ten hours in his closet, in reading his courses, dozing, clipping papers, or darning his stockings; which last he performed to admiration. He could be soberly drunk at the expense of others, with college ale, and at those seasons was always most devout. He wore the same gown five years without draggling or tearing. He never once looked into ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... is past as well—and think you she will die? She goes about as if death were a thing did not concern her. When the fishermen are down on the beach, painting their boats or darning nets, comes Gunhild with her vacant eyes, but with a mind as keen as any ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the time, and Warner, who hated to have any trouble hanging over him, swore he was a blessed and a fortunate man, kissed her on the lips, and went home instanter to tell Jane the news. He broke it when supper was done and they sat alone—her darning and him mixing his 'nightcap,' which was a drop of Hollands, a lump of sugar and a squeeze of ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... Evening, Captain! Are n't you cozy! As peaceful as old ladies with their darning. I 've just come from seeing Petey, up at the lighthouse. Petey says that along in about fifteen minutes the Royal Harry will be showing around the cliff. Is n't it time, Captain, to set up the lantern where ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... recognition; thus the shooting lights of the Aurora Borealis are in Lancashire 'the Merry Dancers'; clouds piled up in a particular fashion are in many parts of England styled 'Noah's Ark'; the puff-ball is 'the Devil's snuff-box'; the dragon-fly 'the Devil's darning-needle'; a large black beetle 'the Devil's coach-horse.' Any one who has watched the kestrel hanging poised in the air, before it swoops upon its prey, will acknowledge the felicity of the name 'windhover,' or sometimes ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... work, with everything early-nice about us; or when we were going to make something "contrive-y," "Swiss-family-Robinson-ish," that got us all together over it, in the hilarity of enterprise and the zeal of acquisition. Miss Trixie could appreciate homely cleverness; darning of carpets and covering of old furniture; she could darn a carpet herself, so as almost to improve upon—certainly to supplant—the original pattern. Yet she always had a fresh amazement for all our performances, ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... encampment except now and then the footsteps of a sentinel, or the cries of a child. In Zorrillo's tent, which was usually brightly lighted until a late hour of the night, only one miserable brand was burning, beside which sat the sleepy bar-maid, darning a hole in her frieze-jacket. The girl did not expect any one, and started when the door of the tent was violently torn open, and her master, followed by two newly-appointed captains, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... run it right through his shoulder, and shoved the bullet out on tother side; and so Dr. Todd cured the young manOf a ball that the Judge had shot into himfor all the world as easy as I could pick out a splinter with my darning-needle. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... for new clothes!" Filomena would snap at him, when his toes came through his shoes and the rents in his jacket-sleeves had spread beyond darning. "These you are wearing are my Giannozzo's, as you well know, and every rag on your back is mine, if there were any law for poor folk, for not a copper of pay for your keep or a stitch of clothing for your body have we had these two years come Assumption—. What's ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... very hard on her husband," declared Jacqueline. "You know he'd rather have her at home taking care of the children properly, and darning the stockings, and ready to greet him when he comes home tired ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... being what is vulgarly called a cuckold, the good man would marry you, and you would be his representative in his little government, where you might merrily pass your days in casting up the weekly bills of housekeeping, and in darning old napkins. What a glory would it be to have a Cato for a husband, whose speeches are as many lectures, and whose lectures are composed of nothing ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... with firm jaws and mild light-blue eyes. The hair being worn away from his forehead made it seem higher than it really was. He wore his working clothes and a pair of very old boots cut down into slippers. The only stocking he had was in his hand, and he appeared to have been darning it. Close behind him came his wife, holding the baby. The bright look of recognition on her face at the sight of Mrs. Greymer faded when she perceived the countess. Rather stiffly she invited them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... you had a temperature yourself. Do you feel bad, Rupert?" asked Sylvia, coming closer to the wagon, and speaking so anxiously that Nealie glanced quickly up from her stocking-darning to ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... walk much are frequently afflicted with blisters. The best preventative of these is to have easy, well-fitting boots and woolen socks. Should blisters occur, a very good plan is to pass a large darning-needle threaded with worsted through the blister lengthwise, leaving an inch or so of the thread outside at each end. This keeps the scurf-skin close to the true skin, and prevents any grit or dirt entering. The thread absorbs the matter, and the old skin remains until ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... rather than height, and rolled along on his short and sturdy legs, as substantial as an elephant, though not quite so big. Then the mother resumed her work. What it was I forget; but she was either trimming a silken bonnet for Violet, or darning a pair of stockings for little Peony's short legs. Again, however, and again, and yet other agains, she could not help turning her head to the window, to see how the children got on ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ease that morning, and did think it rather hard that she should not have had time to recover from her last illness. She acknowledged to herself that she was very weak, that it was hard to drag the darning-needle through that worn stocking, and, oh dear! the holes were so many and so big that week, and there were such quantities of other things to be done, clothes mended and made for the children, besides household matters to be seen to generally; why wasn't ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... family she must do, the mending and darning for the household is her task, the children must be washed and clothed and properly cared for by her. Of her many duties ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... exhausted, and a new one turned up very rarely. This time, however, she was successful, and did call to mind one that she had not thought of before. It had not only grown very dusty, but was full of little holes, which she at once set about darning up with the needle and thread of her imagination, so that, by the time Willie arrived, she had a treat, as she thought, quite ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... girlish excitement was in her cheeks, her garden meant so very much to her. Certainly the house had strong claims—and it was Monday morning—the very morning for forming and carrying out good plans and resolutions! Meals wanted cooking, cupboards and drawers tidying; garments darning and patching! But then—the garden! Did it not also need her. Ah! and did ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... needlework— calm quiet hours full of thought as well as work; she had her music to practice, new books and papers to read, calls to make, mantua makers and milliners to interview, dinners and dances and tea-parties to attend, shopping to look after, delicate bits of darning and mending to exercise her skill on, creams and pasties and cakes to prepare, visitors to welcome and entertain, and many other duties which sprang up—as extras do—unexpectedly, and yet which opened the door for very pleasant surprises ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr |
